Muscle Activation Techniques®

Joint Injuries and Your Internal Suspension System

Joint injuries and injuries to passive tissues such as ligaments and discs are ever-present in our society today.  Whether it is rupturing a meniscus or an ACL or herniating a disc, it seems as if both competitive athletes and weekend warriors alike are commonly plagued by injuries to the passive tissues of their body.  With these types of injuries only becoming more commonplace from high school athletes to middle-aged rec-leaguers, the question of, “What can be done to help prevent these types of injuries?” naturally comes up.  Fortunately, there is something that can be done, and the answer lies in the active tissues of the body – the skeletal muscles.

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Mom, Retired IFBB Bikini Pro, Personal Trainer – Nicole Moneer – MAT® Testimonial

Check out this awesome MATRx® testimonial from retired IFBB Bikini Pro, NASM certified personal trainer, author, and mom Nicole Moneer!  Nicole describes her experience at Muscle Activation Schaumburg while going through the MATRx® process with Charlie.  She talks about the changes she has noticed in her hips and knees as well as how her body feels while she is working out.  Read about everything Nicole has to say about Muscle Activation Techniques® below!

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Pro Basketball Player – Quinton Chievous – MAT® Testimonial

Check out this awesome testimonial from pro basketball player Quinton Chievous!  Quinton did Muscle Activation Techniques® with Charlie in preparation for his second professional season.  After playing in the NBA’s development league with Memphis last year, Quinton is taking his talents overseas to play basketball professionally in Europe.  Quinton was a standout basketball player at Nile’s Notre Dame College Prep before heading to the University of Tennessee.  After graduating early from Tennessee, Quinton finished his collegiate basketball career while also earning his masters degree at Hamptom University.  Check out his testimonial below on his experience at Muscle Activation Schaumburg!

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Compensation – How Your Feet Can Be Creating Back Issues

Compensation often gets a bad rap.  It is portrayed in a negative light as the demise of your orthopedic health and something that needs to be eviscerated by any means necessary.  However, compensation is actually a brilliant way for your body to remain highly functioning from one moment to the next.  Without compensation, we would likely have far more physical issues throughout our entire body.  The caveat, though, is that we may not want to compensate in the same manner for an extended period of time.  Not only can this put excess stress on certain muscles, it can also stress your joints.

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Getting Your Muscles Back To Par

When I was first introduced to Muscle Activation Techniques® in 2010, I had never seen it before or heard of it before.  But, the goal of MAT® fit perfectly with an idea I had developed about 18 months earlier.  See, throughout high school and college, I was really big into sports performance.  Initially, my interest stemmed from wanting to improve my own performance, but it soon grew into wanting to help others improve their performance, as well.

By my senior year of college, I was working with a number of sports teams and individual athletes on campus.  I was also constantly running experiments on myself, the most notable of which was testing the hypothesis that if I could just get my body working the way it was designed to work, then I would be able to perform at a much higher level than I ever was before.

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Are you a candidate for MAT®? Answer these three questions to find out!

At Muscle Activation Schaumburg, we often receive the question of, “How do I know if Muscle Activation Techniques® is something I should be doing?”.  This is a very valid question because MAT® is something that helps a wide variety of people, from professional athletes to professional parents, from elementary school kids to executives, and from the most active among us to those who are far more sedentary.  All of these populations seem to benefit from MAT®, so how can you know if MAT® is something that you are a candidate for?

When it comes to the “who” of MAT®, we generally see that our clients fall into one of three categories here at Muscle Activation Schaumburg.  But, the category that you fall into depends on how you answer the following three questions.  If you want to know if you are a candidate for MAT®, ask yourself these three questions: (more…)

By Charlie Cates, ago

4 Early Warning Signs That You Need MAT®

As a Muscle Activation Techniques® practitioner, I often get asked the question, “What is MAT®?”.  This is then usually followed up by, “How do I know if I need it?”.  Fortunately, there are many signs that you may benefit from MAT®.  While some signs and symptoms may appear after needing MAT® for years, I want to discuss four early warning signs that may present themselves before you experience any bigger issues.  If you notice any of these warning signs within yourself, that can be a clear indicator that your body is in need of Muscle Activation Techniques®.

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By Charlie Cates, ago

What is MAT®? A brief history and overview.

This week, I want to dive headfirst into this discussion of, “What is Muscle Activation Techniques®?”.  Specifically, I want to discuss what the number one goal of MAT® is and why achieving that goal is important.

But, in order to understand what MAT® is, we need to first understand how it began.  MAT® was developed by Greg Roskopf and has been taught since the early 2000’s.  Greg has his world corporate headquarters south of Denver where he is a consultant to many of professional sports teams in the area as well as many high-level individual athletes.

Early on in Greg’s career, he recognized that many people have asymmetrical motion between the right and left sides of their body.  For example, somebody may be able to lift their left arm all the way up but only lift their right arm part of the way.  Now, his original training had him focusing on stretching the side that didn’t move as well.  This is a concept that I am sure many people are familiar with, where if your muscles feel really tight you try to stretch them to help get your joints moving better and loosen the muscles up.

However, Greg soon became introduced to this idea of muscle testing where a practitioner pushes on a client’s limb to see how much force they can generate.  And it was from there that he started to correlate that if somebody’s shoulder or hip couldn’t move as well on one side as it could on the other, there were often muscle weaknesses that were associated with the limited side, too.  Furthermore, when those weak muscles were addressed and their output improved, joint motion would improve as well.

This correlation became the basis for what is now known as the Roskopf Principle, which states that muscle tightness is secondary to muscle weakness.

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By Charlie Cates, ago

Personal Training and MAT® – What’s the difference?

A question we often get at Muscle Activation Schaumburg is, “What’s the difference between Muscle Activation Techniques® (MAT®) and personal training?”.  As personal trainers and MAT® practitioners, this is an important clarification for us to help our clients and prospective clients with.

For us at Muscle Activation Schaumburg, personal training and MAT® go hand in hand.  While there are distinct differences between the two, there are a lot of similarities, as well.

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By Charlie Cates, ago